We are here. Asheville still feels like home and looking out at the mountains makes me cry.

I feel 100% better, thank you western medicine. Tonight we were talking at dinner about how sometimes when you’re sick you just can’t see the way through it, and it’s so very hard to remember that there are solutions to most everything; that you’ve just got to work at chasing them down. In this case, I had to be a pest, and stop discounting how sick I was, and keep calling and bitching and demanding help. It’s hard to do those things when you’re in the middle of it though. Being sick is so depressing, so limiting. I really do appreciate feeling well, tonight.
ToddlerA is charming the pants of of all of Asheville, and TeenHer, of course, turns heads everywhere we go- finally back in her element. She is 13 today. 13 years ago, we lay together in a hospital bed and watched the snow fall outside the window. We said goodbye to my grandparents and aunt, who had to jump back in the car and beat the weather back to Florida so they’d be home for Christmas. We brought her home on Dec 23rd, dressed in a pajamas sprinkled with candy canes, showed her our tiny tree decorated with white crocheted ornaments, placed her in the wooden bassinet my grandmother brought us, and settled into the winter.

13 years later it’s 60 degrees in the mountains! How does that happen? Everything is evolving, I guess. My daughter towers over me on the walk home, her arm loped around my shoulders, stooping down to lean her head on my shoulder. A picture of days to come.